


Queen and Consort

by Aliana



Series: Back to Middle-earth Month 2012 [18]
Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works
Genre: Arguably kinky, BDSM, Bechdel Test Pass, Dom/sub, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Genderswap, Politics, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 23:46:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/667842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliana/pseuds/Aliana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All is barter: for those who’d rule kingdoms, there are no safe words.  Features gender-swapped!Witch-king of Angmar; a prequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/364164">The Annals of Angmar</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queen and Consort

**Author's Note:**

> **March 23**
> 
> **B2MeM Challenge:** Kink (Femslash), The Immortal (Magic and Real), Fear of commitment (Relationship), I saw all the bright people in imposing flocks they landed (Song Lyrics)  
>  **Format:** Short story  
>  **Genre:** Romance  
>  **Rating:** I'm going to go ahead and say "Adult." Though we're all adults here, right?  
>  **Warnings:** Sex, mature themes--though more the latter than the former, I think. (Political BDSM?)  
>  **Characters:** Sauron, (gender-swapped) Witch-King of Angmar, OFC  
>  **Pairings:** Sauron/Witch-Queen, Witch-Queen/OFC

It was in that year that the Gift-Giver came to the Queen’s court, and sat beside her throne. Soon it was whispered that he visited her bedchamber, as well. The Queen did not care what the servants said in the corridor. She did not care, though it was true.

He was warm in her arms, though his embrace was iron-fierce. His kisses were laced with wanting that went beyond lust, and she rose up to meet him. His eyes were light; he was fairer beyond any she’d known, man or woman—fair enough for herself. Most beautiful of all was his voice, which was promise and fulfillment at once. He murmured plans against the hollow of her throat, the curve of her breast, the softness of her thigh. She felt more than heard them—felt more than heard _Him_.

He stared up at her, offered his final gift. Deathless she would be, and feared. Walk the earth beyond natural life, and rule whatever kingdoms we shall have. Had he been anyone else, she’d have laughed, disbelieving.

She laughed, but with joy; moved harder against him.

***

“And what will you have of me?” the Queen asked. No fool, she: all is barter. Always.

“Your neighbors to the south keep fierce watch on their border. Do they fear you?”

“They should. But they are wary of all.”

“Do they treat with you?”

“Not often.”

“Will they treat with the Queen?”

She smiled.

***

A rude court they held compared to hers; wine that burned and balanced on the edge of sourness, hearths too large for their fires. Still, they gave her welcome: she was a Queen.

She sat at table, wrists pale beneath the fur cuffs of her sleeves as she cut her meat. The King was polite. The King was also distant, seemed to address a spot in the air above her head. Friendship was welcome, he told her, but borders were borders. She spoke of trade routes, broad roads, way-stations and alliances more firm than what tokens of friendship could offer. He said little, took a drink.

Beside him, his wife was silent—in this land she would not be called Queen; that title was reserved for the rare woman born to the throne, not one merely married to it. She was a princess; a consort only. She was silent, but caught the Queen’s eye now and then. Her hair was dark; candlelight flickered on the backs of her hands.

Later one of the Queen’s escorts stood beside his mistress.

“The King heeds his wife,” he said. “But with him she is equal measures warm and chill. Or so I have been told.”

She said nothing, raised her chin. A river needn’t have only a single crossing.

***

In the morning she rode beyond the keep walls with the ladies. There were falcons; the consort held her arm steady, balanced a great hard-eyed bird on her forearm as it gripped her leather sleeve with its talons. When she loosed it, the sound of its feathers catching air was surprisingly soft. When it soared above them they could see that the undersides of its wings were pale. In time it returned to her, allowed itself to be hooded and jessed. They hunted only with the female hawks: the males, the tercels, were too small to seek for the best game.

“She returns to you always?” asked the Queen. She knew the hunt, had seen prey-birds lost to freedom’s call when they were loosed by impatient trainers.

The other woman smiled, voice soft as she fastened ties: “She knows her mistress.”

***

They took the midday meal in the woman’s chambers.

“Is it not better than the hall?” she asked. “Warmer?”

“All your rooms are gracious.”

“Though all our men are not.”

“Your lord husband is gracious, though careful with his words. Understandable.”

“My lord husband treats not easily with foreigners.”

“With foreigners, or with foreign Queens?” The Queen took a drink.

“Both,” the consort said, and smiled with her mouth closed. A pause.

“And what of you, my lady?” asked the Queen.

“What of me?”

“Would you treat with foreigners? See your borders safer, your coffers enriched? Your kingdom made stronger?”

“No choice of mine.”

“I do not believe that.”

“Believe what you will,” she said. Her voice was mild as warm milk, but her eyes were dark, heavy-shadowed by long lashes.

The sound of forks and knives scraping plates. Then:

“And would you treat with a Queen?”

The consort smiled again, and this time her lips parted slightly.

“I would treat with a woman,” she said.

***

So it went for the rest of her visit in the neighbor-kingdom: days and evenings in echoing halls, idle fingers tracing map lines, proposals brought and dropped like limp rags. The King civil, immovable.

Nights called for a different sort of exchange. The consort was sharp in her want, fierce as the falcon she bore on her arm in the forest. But unlike the bird, she’d not accept hood or jesses after she’d circled for her prey. That part fell to her companion.

So. The Queen allowed herself to be humbled, bound. She’d not have accepted it from any of her lovers in court, not even from Him. But all is barter, always. And she learned: blinkered, immobile, she learned to brace for equal possibilities, soft feathering breath or sharp blows. Sound was important. So, it seemed, were the marks. Acceptance was resilience.

Nights, the consort showed how to snatch pleasure from the jaws of pain, as raptors clench talons around some small soft creature in the high grass. Always, that milk-mild voice, no matter what her fingers and palms were doing, where they scratched or caressed. But her breath grew ragged, even in the absence of touch, as if in anticipation of her own power. The expansion of her kingdom, no matter what its bounds. She drew it out, pressed against her lover, tendons tight, warm flesh against flesh. And she drew it out, and drew it out…

In daytime, the Queen knew not what words passed between the King and his wife in closed chambers. She knew only that little by little he seemed to yield, to trace lines on the map with more emphasis. To meet her eye. To open borders would mean the ability to divert strength elsewhere, after all.

Nights, she lay open, wrists and ankles straining where they were held fast. Still, her guard was up.

And then one morning, the King let his guard down.

She smiled, clasped his hand, made him a curtsey. More plans were made, messages sent back. She made ready to leave.

“And will you return?” the consort asked her on the last night.

The Queen smiled, and even as she folded her arms she did not conceal the welts on her breasts.

“Do not doubt it.”

***

She rode back north, returned to Him.

“Success,” she said. “What now?”

He smiled, and He was radiant. “You know.”

“Why send an emissary to treat with them? We might have assailed them without words exchanged.”

“That is not the point.”

“Is it not?”

“A warrior must be sure that he can wield his weapons with precision.”

She lifted her chin: “Or hers.”

***

The border-guards were thinned, loosened, as the King had promised in their treaty. The Queen’s armies—the Queen’s and _His_ armies—tore through them easily as a surgeon’s knife through naked flesh. Her soldiers and their weapons were as a bright mass upon the land. Blood thickened the earth. Broken bodies littered the roads, things of little consequence.

Village, forest, keep, castle: all burned, the kingdom bound and laid bare. This was her doing, the work of her own weapons: she shuddered with pleasure as she strode through the wreckage.

The King and his wife were brought before the Queen and the Gift-Giver.

The consort would not be cowed: “Is this what I bounty I should reap for treating with a Queen?” she demanded.

“With this Queen,” came the reply.

The consort lifted her chin. Her eyes were dark, and candlelight flickered on her hands, and she was beautiful. For one moment, the Queen remembered the hawk balanced on her arm, the waves of tenderness, inevitable as the tide rolling out after the high waters of pain had receded. If there was a last moment in which the Queen might have turned away from her course, and all our history changed after that, then that was it.

The moment shook her heart, but did not turn it. The world lay prone and straining beneath her, and she was His.

She gave the order. The sword fell.

***

Amidst the ashes, then, He gave her his final gift. Slipped the ring over her finger, and it was so warm and true on her hand that she knew that all human matrimony was a pale mockery compared to this union. Death forsook her, and if she had any shred of fear left in her, then that abandoned her, as well. Regret abandoned her.

She knew she would hunt forever, then, be Queen and Consort both. Hawk and handler, weapon and wielder.

She turned away from the corpses and followed Him. They were no longer any business of hers.


End file.
